I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life
stood before her and held in each hand a gift - in the one, Love, in the
other, Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long, and she said,
"Freedom!" And Life said, "You have well chosen. If you had
said Love, I would have given you what you asked for; and I would have gone
from you, and returned no more. Now the day will come when I shall return.
On that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand."

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

Standing as we do at the end of the twentieth century, it is
clear that through this century's opportunities, we have chosen to search for
freedom. During the twentieth century people came to realise that it is
impossible to know others unless one knows oneself first; therefore, humanity
entered a time of great loneliness and isolation, in order to put each
individual's entire attention on himself. Rilke illustrates this whole feeling
when he says, "At bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this
one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity – that
one is alone."

People in this time have been on a search for individuality.
This search has been lonely and heartbreaking, but has allowed man to respond to
Socrates' dictum "Man, know thyself". Through this search, a greater
consciousness is beginning to emerge that sees that the further path to the self
requires finding a way to relate to others in a true fashion.

If you had an instrument that was out of tune, it would be
very difficult to tune it in an orchestra in which everybody else's instrument
was also being tuned. For this reason, people took their own souls to a quiet
place to see how each string sounded in perfect interval. However, no matter how
beautiful a single melody may be, you can only take it so far – and real music
is to be found in the interplay between two perfectly tuned instruments, each
crafting melodies in harmony with the other.

Deciding to find the true light in another person demands
great courage, and, to find that light, one must end up finding it in oneself
and in the world. However, the more one searches, the more one discovers that
this light does not require seeking – instead, we need to examine in ourselves
what blocks it out.

The quest of our time has been to find ourselves – this
cannot be completed until we discover ourselves in relation to others.

I - Dependency

"They say the loving and the devouring are all one, don't they…"

Dependency occurs quite often within the search for one's
self and others. People need stability in relationships, and so they tend to
attach themselves to their partner. One of the most common 'romantic' images is
the aphorism "I cannot live without you." This, as Peck says,

… is parasitism, not love. When you require another
individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There
is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of
necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people
love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each
other but choose to live with each other.

When people fall into a dependent relationship, they are most
often regressing into the patterns of infancy, in which mother and child live in
symbiotic union. To the child, the mother is indistinguishable from him. If he
is hungry, his mother feeds him. If he cries, his mother comforts him. This is,
indeed, how most dependent relationships begin. Each of the pair feels "My
beloved knows and fulfils all my needs as if he/she were a part of me."
Then later, when the realisation occurs that each of the pair has different
needs, they either whirl away, looking for someone else to lean on, or get into
a power struggle, each trying to control the other's needs and actions. The
third and only alternative is for their relationship to move into maturity
through a free choice by both of them.

In the case of the Eros and Psyche myth, the two characters
are a double metaphor for the archetypal journey from love to true love.

When Eros first takes Psyche away to his mountain castle,
they live together in a state of contented bliss. Through her sister's jealousy,
encountered on her visit back to her prosaic and ordinary 'home', she realises
that she cannot accept this world of dramatic, poetic darkness. Feeling Eros in
the dark is not enough – she wants to see him in the light. She wants to drink
him in with her conscious eyes as well as her body. As the god of love, he also
encompasses her own feelings, and this means that she is prepared to look upon
her own feelings in conscious light, no matter what the consequences.

When she does this, lighting a lamp by the bedside when he is
asleep, she is awe-struck by his beauty. Thus, she is beginning to see her lover
in a more realistic light, and she has a moment of reverent joy as she sees him
more clearly. She is also looking on him as a personification of her own
feelings, which she finds, are, indeed, beautiful. However, she is so affected
by this revelation that she leans over him and spills a drop of hot lamp oil on
his chest, and he awakens. Her lover is forced to expose himself in a way he had
never intended, and he flees from her; he cannot endure her striving to know his
true self, so he leaves the one person to whom he is not solely a 'god' to. In
his role as a metaphor for her feelings, he is the idealised, romantic, 'Eros'
love, which cannot survive awakening. She quickly realises that her desire for
unity with him springs from her need to fill an emptiness inside her own being.

She is then thrown back into the world to search for her
self, to scratch for her own worms – to find in herself something worthy of
true love. She does not abandon the search for what seemed to be her completion,
but tries to find him by undergoing trials which test her own faculties, so that
when she finds him again, she will be able to share with him the things
she so loved about him instead of only desiring to take them from him. Before
she can stand with him, she must learn to stand alone.

II - Limits

"The calculus equation is used to find where a relationship is at any
one point by means of its limits."

There is one aspect of human relationships that is not
always, or even often, clear to the people involved. This principle is quite
well known in calculus: relationships have limits, places they cannot go. Human
relationships reach these limits when people realise that they are as close as
they can get to another person— or that there is something they just cannot be
to that person. However, the more the harmonies of a relationship are explored,
the more you find out which intervals sound better. Closer, more intimate, is
not always more wholesome. In musical terms, closer intervals do not necessarily
sound better; for no readily apparent reason, a third sounds better than a
second does. People can often find each other more in a seemingly less intimate
friendship than they could, for example, in marriage. The added space lets them
see both their friend and themselves more clearly. Also, what is symbiotic in an
erotic relationship can be simply complementary in a friendship. Friends tend
not to have as unrealistic expectations of each other as lovers do. As Madeleine
L'Engle states:

Friendship takes not only time, it takes a willingness to
drop false expectations, of ourselves, of each other. Friends —or lovers—
are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be
unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we
should be giving understanding. We are not static in any relation. The world
we live in is unstable under our feet, and so we grab at any security we
can. We all want security. I do. I want…to know that my friends will
always be there for me when I need them-and vice versa. We make golden
calves out of false expectations and are horrified when they turn out to be metal or clay, not flesh and blood at all.

Erotic love does not need to take time— in fact, it tends
to want to waste as little time as possible. Friendship tends to take the time
necessary to examine intents and motives. This is beginning to sound like erotic
love is not very desirable, but that is not the case at all. Erotic love is a
flame, transitory, consuming; it becomes something in itself and forgets about
the human beings who began it. However, that does not make it any less necessary
or beautiful. But it is not how all relationships should be, even if it is
possible for them to be. Just as all the spacings in a scale are needed for
music to be created, so people move through the harmonics and dissonances of a
relationship, finding where they are in relation to each other and discovering
how close it is important for them to be.

III - Sexuality

And what is a kiss, when all is done?

A promise given under seal— a vow

Taken before the shrine of memory—

A signature acknowledged—a rosy dot

Over the i in Loving—a secret whispered

To listening lips apart—a moment made

Immortal, with a rush of wings unseen—

A sacrament of blossoms, a new song

Sung by two hearts to an old simple tune—

The ring of one horizon around two souls

Together, all alone!

Some people would argue that this difficult subject does not
belong in a project on love. Sex, it is true, is not love, or even a
manifestation of love. While it is true that, when sexuality is joined with
love, immense beauty and wonder are created and experienced, when sex becomes an
object of its own, it leads to social disaster and desolation of the soul.

One of the greatest challenges faced by societies throughout
history was to find a place for Man's lustful side. Other civilisations dealt
with this with varying degrees of success through myths, religion (either
sanctifying or oppressing sexuality), or social conventions; it has become
evident in modern times that this does not work anymore. Today's society is
sex-centred in an attempt to bring sexual matters out from the complete darkness
where they had been for the first half of the century. However, sex is still
very frightening for most people, a wild and seemingly uncontrollable force that
makes us do things we otherwise would not, and so we have attempted to isolate
it and view it apart from any reality or emotion. By trying to look at sex by
itself, we tear it free from its moorings in heartfelt emotion, and it drifts on
the wind. This dislocation allows it to be abused, used for selling or promoting
a multitude of commodities and ideas, which further moves it away from its
proper home in emotion. This unhealthy societal sexuality clearly shows the need
for each individual to discover her own relationship to her sexual nature. Rilke
foresaw this at the beginning of the century in his letters to Franz Kappus:

To cope with sexuality is difficult. Yes, but everything
assigned to us is a challenge; nearly everything that matters is a challenge
and everything matters. If you would only recognise that and come to the
place where you would strive on your own to finally gain your very own
relationship with sexuality, always keeping aware of your native bent
and your personality, your own experience, your childhood, and
your strengths, then you need no longer fear losing yourself and becoming
unworthy of your sexuality, your most precious possession.

Rilke goes on to explain that lust does not preclude
innocence, but that innocence is lost when people use sex, or anything else, as
a distraction, an alternative to spiritual growth. Scott Peck, a contemporary
psychotherapist, explains the use of sex as an attempted replacement for
spiritual growth. He argues that human beings have an impulse to unite in
oneness with the universe. Romantic love (as a reversion to a symbiotic
childlike state), certain drugs, and sex all provide an easily gained glimpse
into this oneness. Sex is probably the most potent of these three, as it
involves the most intimate and immediate unity available to a human being. Peck
describes this "collapse of ego boundaries" as a necessary
"foretaste" of a more lasting mystical ecstasy that can be gained
through the work of love. This foretaste gives us incentive to make necessary
commitments to others in order to found lasting relationships in which real love
can occur.

Sexual desire has an innate element of cruelty. Heightened
desire can bring with it a venting of destructive emotion. The very picture of
bodies passionately entwining has inherent violence. For this reason, couples
who have long since ceased practising love in their relationship can still be
physically intimate; this seeming contradiction is caused in part by the
divorcing of sex from love which I spoke about earlier. The phenomenon of
loneliness heightening sexual desire is a concept that Erich Fromm explores; he
maintains that while the moment of union that sex provides appears to hold the
promise of escape from our ego-barriers, when the moment is over, we may end up
despising the person we shared it with because the estrangement is now felt much
more acutely than before. Sex can also be tied to any strong emotion, not just
love. The combination of all of these elements makes sex a potentially very
dangerous force.

Erich Fromm's solution to the potent nature of sexuality is
tenderness, which arises from 'brotherly love' — it allows the balancing of
sexual urges with true caring for another person, with the acknowledgement of
human solidarity. Sex is very important in any intensely intimate love
relationship as it allows the people involved to determine the passionate
interaction between archetypal masculine and feminine, and the softer, more
human love. When these two are reconciled, tenderness appears.

IV – Male and Female

'…Before us lies eternity; our souls

Are love, and a continual farewell.'

There are no easy explanations for the interactions that
happen exclusively between men and women. Even with sexual roles being redefined
throughout this century, the sexes have remained strikingly different. It is
possible that this difference is the result of biology – meaning that because
our bodies are different we view things differently. This idea has interesting
consequences because it means that our outlook and philosophy are formed by our
physical surroundings, particularly by our bodies. This is certainly true in
many circumstances – the body has often become a metaphor for larger concepts;
the Greeks, for example, based their entire architecture on human proportion. In
Platonic philosophy, everything in the physical world stemmed from something in
the realm of 'ideals'. In this thinking, our physical forms are the result of
thought, and not the other way round. The question becomes a bit vague at this
point – do our ideas determine our reality, or do our surroundings inspire our
thoughts? The same dilemma is faced when looking at men and women; our
perceptions, affected by the filters of our gender-determined bodies, hormones,
processes and soul qualities, only govern how we relate to ourselves and the
world – they are not who we are. Therefore, one could say that our
existential reality gives us the resources for creating our own true reality.
This assertion certainly goes against the ideal of objective truth. However, it
does not mean that objective truth does not exist; only that objective truth is
merely a foundation for our own subjective truth. Thus, everything we experience
through our senses contributes to our own truth, which means our senses, our
earthly experiences, are essential to a true understanding of 'reality'. So,
since men and women necessarily experience life differently, true communion
between these and other polarities is necessary for us to find our human
truth. This enlightening reconciliation can occur both in a mature love
relationship between people, or as a conscious recognition of polarities within
one person. These polarities can, with some imagination, be traced back to the
polarities of masculine and feminine elements.

i) Male

"Lying at the bottom of the pond is a large man covered
with hair all the way down to his feet, kind of reddish–he looks a little like
rusty iron."

Men have historically been the warriors, food providers and
tyrants of society. Until the middle of this century, men always had a clear
picture of their own masculinity, then things changed:

Back then there was a person we could call the fifties
male…if you were a man, you were supposed to like football games, be
aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide.
But this image…lacked feminine space…in a way that led directly to the
unbalanced pursuit of the Vietnam war…The fifties male had a clear vision
of what a man is, but the vision involved massive inadequacies and flaws.

During the sixties, however, men were forced to look at what
this unbalanced vision had wrought in the world. Also, the swiftly rising
profile of women not only forced men to look at them in a completely new way,
but also forced them to discover their own feminine aspect. Wonderful things
have come of this, but most men are still not happy. This is because, although
men are now more in balance with the feminine, they have forgotten the awesome
power of their creative force – they have abandoned it because of its
seemingly dangerous, low and destructive nature. Men still identify their
masculine side with the mindless aggression that initiated countless wars. The
real masculinity, however, is more deeply rooted than any surface aggression –
it encompasses the sacrificial, nurturing, but still very raw, male creative
force.

ii) Female

Women, too, have gone through a number of transformations
through the century. Women have been breaking out of their roles as the silent,
submissive wives, useful only as far as they contribute to forming a family.
This transition has required women to form extremely strong individualities,
which means that they have not been able to trust any external force. Through
this search, women have found important roles as people – as autonomous
individuals – but they, too, have lost something; in the past, women had a
natural, unconscious, effortless tie to the earth. Because it was necessary for
them to cut off all external influences, that part of them has died. And yet,
that may have been essential:

…it is a common experience that those things which have
been lived unconsciously since the beginning of time may have to die as
automatic or natural responses, in order to be reborn as conscious knowledge
and voluntary action.

As women and men begin to redefine themselves, they come to
the realisation that they each need to find an equal part of masculine and
feminine within themselves. However, it has become clear that the masculine and
feminine impulses must be different in a man than in a woman; for us to have a
clear experience of our truth, that polarity must exist – and because the
truth exists, the balanced polarity will as well.

When these polarities are reconciled, a third element enters;
in our individual searches it is our selves, and in our relationships it is the
greater expression of the relationship itself. There is a saying that a child is
love made visible; in any relationship where there is love there is a child of
sorts – it is whatever great thing comes of a true love.

V – Permutations

"Yet never have two lovers kissed but they

Believed that there was some other near at hand,

And almost wept because they could not find it."

– W.B. Yeats, "The Shadowy Waters"

i) Marriage

"Whether it be shallow or not, commitment is the
foundation, the bedrock, of any genuinely loving relationship."

– Scott Peck

"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll
become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

– Socrates

Marriage has become a very questionable covenant in modern
times. Divorce rates are exceedingly high – more marriages fall apart than
stay together. It has been recently argued that marriage is an outdated
institution that in the past was only used as a way of keeping men and women in
their traditional role models and passing the same onto their children.
Certainly the traditional 'marriage' has to be questioned in modern times –
indeed, it has also had to die to be consciously renewed. Thus, in an
appropriately titled article, "Marriage is Dead, Long Live Marriage",
Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig offers a solution:

The goal would be to reserve marriage only for those
people who are especially gifted in finding their salvation in the
intensive, continuous relationship and dialectical encounter between
man and woman…Marriage is not comfortable and harmonious; rather, it is a
place of individuation where a person rubs up against himself and against
his partner, bumps up against him in love and in rejection, and in this
fashion learns to know himself, the world, good and evil, the heights and the depths.

Guggenbühl-Craig compares marriage to religious hermitage.
Just as the hermit cannot escape himself, the couple cannot escape each other.
This picture makes the idea of marriage quite a bit clearer; just as the purpose
of the solitary recluse through the centuries has been to reconcile the
dichotomies within each individual, in the emerging new form of marriage, there
is a chance to reconcile two individualities to each other, and so find the
third that exists between them. The immediate problem with this solution is the
idea of having children outside of marriage. In what other possible situation
can children healthily develop and grow? One solution is to enclose the parent
or parents in a community in which true 'community' and love occur. The communes
of the sixties had this idea, but they did not work for at least two reasons:
the child did not have strong male and female role-models. Also, those
communities did not pass beyond the stage of 'false community', which in a group
situation is synonymous with the 'false love', the dissolving of boundaries that
occurs in romantic love. Wherever the child is brought up, then, must be a place
in which love has been brought to maturity. It is also essential that the child
have a strong male and a strong female influence in order to develop both sides
of its soul. In these circumstances, marriage could become a sacrament, reserved
for those who felt that their further spiritual development lay in developing
directly alongside another person.

"Above all, marriage is a new task and a new seriousness
– a new challenge to and questioning of the strength and generosity of each
partner and a great new danger for both."

–Rainer Maria Rilke

ii) The Art of Power

One of the greatest misconceptions about love is the idea
that love requires harmony and pacifism. Great power is granted to those in a
love relationship, and not to use it is as wrong as using it carelessly. It is
dangerous, of course, to confront a loved one; as soon as you do so, you are
placing yourself in a position of superiority, and it is very important, before
you do so, to examine your wisdom and motives. This self-examination is an
essential element of love as a process of spiritual

creation.
The name given to such scrutiny in the Middle Ages was meekness or humility:
"Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of a
man's self as he is. Any man who truly sees and feels himself as he is must
surely be meek indeed."

The words are a fourteenth-century monk's, and they
illustrate how the same qualities are necessary in both solitary and communal
relations.

Confrontation should be a last resort, however. It is
preferable to exercise power by showing it, i.e. teaching by example.

As Peck shows, it is risky to exercise power because we are
presuming to play God; however, if we do it properly, we find that we, in a way,
become God.

iii) Narcissus

"…It is not loved there. Down there is nothing

but the equanimity of tumbled stones,

and I can see my sadness.

Was this my image in her eyes flashing?"

Self-love, or Narcissism, is usually seen as the lowest form
of love, mostly because of the

perception that self-love
precludes love for others. Erich Fromm explains this quite clearly; he asserts
that true love loves others as themselves, as human beings, and, since we too
arehuman beings, it follows that we love ourselves as
well.

If we do not love ourselves, it is because of deeply hidden
flaws of which we are ashamed; how then could we love others, knowing that, as
human beings, they must have just as many failings? People who love others and
not themselves can only do so conditionally, and their 'love' fades when the
illusion of perfection does. The person without self-love cannot love at all –
he cannot afford to give love to others if he has none for himself; he cannot
extend himself to others if he cannot reach himself. Essentially, self-love is a
foundation to all other love. It is parallel to the assertion that if you do not
know yourself you cannot know others; if the strings of your own instrument are
out of tune, you cannot hope to play in any sort of harmony with others. That is
why Narcissus' self-seeing is so important, but beware – a reflection is only
a reflection…

iv) Passion and Discipline

"Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales

Which tell us the way to go…"

The overwhelming power and capriciousness of the passionate
feelings of love seem to proscribe containment – it seems that if we try to
contain them, they will die as much as a caged eagle would, denied the sky.
However, left uncontained, the immense power in these forces would drift,
beautiful, and yet doing harm whenever anything blindly got in its way.
Therefore, it is not a matter of containing passion, but of guiding it. Through
this process, the polarities of passion and reason emerge. These are
manifestations of the larger forces of energy and structure.

It is difficult to keep passion and reason in balance. If we
keep too much of a hold on our faculties of reason, our passionate vitality is
kept too much in the dark and retreats back into us, leaving us dim and
lifeless. If we act completely at the mercy of our passions, we not only lose
control, but we also burn out with great speed, unable to deal with the wild
energy flowing through us. The end result is the same – spiritual or physical
apathy.

Scott Peck compares relationships in which passion alone
rules as

…primary colours in the painting of children, splashed
on the paper with abandon, occasionally not without charm… demonstrating
the sameness that characterises the art of young children.

A relationship in which passion is controlled and mixed he
compares to a Rembrandt painting – still containing the colour, yet used with
more meaning and care. As he elaborates, "Passion is feeling of great
depth. The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled is no indication whatsoever that
it is any deeper than a feeling that is disciplined."

Feelings are our source of energy – our inner flame, what
enables us to receive inspiration. As long as we remember that passion means
'suffering', we will be able to accept its power, our own power, with
responsibility.

VI – Loneliness, Solitude and Individuality

Not in my grandfather's time, but in his father's, there
lived a rabbi in a small Russian town who, through many years of solitary
contemplation of the deepest questions of God and creation, had decided that, at
the very root of things, one just did not know.

One morning, shortly after making this decision, he was
walking across the town square. He was not halfway across when a Cossack, the
town's bad-tempered policeman, accosted him.

"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

"I don't know," the rabbi replied.

"You don't know? You don't know? For twenty years you
have walked across the square to the synagogue at exactly this time. And you say
you don't know? You are making fun of me, and I'll soon teach you better!"

So the Cossack dragged the rabbi off to the jail. Just as he
was about to throw him into a cell, the rabbi turned to him and said, "You
see, you just don't know."

This story illustrates part of the significance of solitude.
Choosing to be alone is a very frightening prospect. When we are alone, we are
cut off from all assurances, all of the mundane daily interactions that convince
us that people are like us and that we can be fairly sure of what will happen
when we interact with them. Being alone forces us to accept our individuality
– to accept that we are alone, and that we can never be really sure what
another person will do. Søren Kierkegaard recognised that this is the case –
you can never truly know whether someone forgives you when you wrong him,
or if or how someone loves you. This is one of the most frightening and
uncomfortable realisations in the area of human relationship. As soon as one
realises that one is ultimately alone, loneliness occurs.

Loneliness cannot be cured merely by being around people –
once you are made lonely, you will remain so, even or especially around other
people, until you discover a way out through accepting your solitude.

Loneliness is a kind of emptiness; it is caused by the
longing for a third element to bridge the gap between themselves and the
unknowable other. The only way to find this completing element is first to
accept the fact that objective knowledge of consciousness outside our own is
impossible. Then the search for a subjective experience of and reconciliation
with others can begin.

Peck describes this stage of emptiness as "the bridge
between chaos and community"; in his theorem, communities move through the
same stages as couples do. Therefore it applies here: an attitude of false
assurance and unfounded knowledge has to die in order for a new truth, based on
subjective experience of the unknowable, to arise. We cannot know others, but we
can see their faces, hear their voices; we cannot see a wave, but we can see its
effect through the water, hear it through the air; we cannot experience God, but
we can watch a sunset, live through a hurricane, or feel love. In this way, the
realisation of every conscious entity being inexorably alone can be reconciled
with the need to share one's self – through the interplay of our senses and
emotions, a third element can arise that is common to all of us. In order for
this element to enter, it is necessary for an emptiness to open in us and
between us, to give it space.

Solitude is needed to allow us the space necessary to
immolate old ideals, feelings or beliefs in order for them to be reborn. Also,
being alone gives us the time to go through death-processes uninterrupted by
outside interference. When anything dies, we go through five stages of release:
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. This is as true
for spiritual, emotional or mental death as it is for physical death. When a
child receives news that his parents are changing jobs and that he must
therefore move to a different city, he goes through the same successive stages:
at first he tries to pretend that the dreaded event will never happen, that the
job offer will fall through, and that he will not have to go. When it becomes
apparent that this is not the case, he becomes angry – at his parents, at the
world, at himself. Then he desperately tries to plead with anyone (or anything)
that may be able to solve his plight, but when it becomes apparent that this is
a fruitless venture, he falls into a deep depression – he turns inward and
dwells upon everything he is leaving behind and what it has meant to him.
Eventually, as the moving date draws nearer, he may come to a place of
acceptance – remembering and then relinquishing everything he is leaving
behind, and opening himself to the new possibilities of where he is going. Maybe
he realises that he has been miserable in the place he is now, or that a new
situation will give him more space to grow. This whole process is one he would
not have gone through if he had not been given the opportunity to look at his
situation, not been shown that it needed to die. In the same way, we need
solitude to examine our practical and emotional lives and see what needs to die
– a view that would not be possible unless we moved ourselves away from these
situations.

The very fact that we cannot be together with another being
is our blessing as well as our curse; once we had achieved union, we might very
well recognise it as a step backwards and no longer desire it. As Rilke
maintains:

A togetherness between two people is an
impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a
narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his
fullest freedom and development. But, once the realisation is accepted that
even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to
exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in
loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the
other whole against the wide sky!

The distance he speaks of is analogous to Peck's emptiness
– it is a space for a reconciling element to enter, and for something new to
be created. It is also a space that is constantly being filled, and so
constantly needs to be renewed; as a forest fire releases tightly locked seeds
and makes way for new growth, so elements which have reached their completion
need to die to be reborn as seedlings of new aspects. For this process to be
possible, we need solitude.

In our modern lives, we are surrounded by a multitude of
activities, thoughts, and emotions; solitude allows us to find our centre point
in order that we may "be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is
still." This centre point in ourselves allows us to hold out the chalice
that holds our essential capacity for giving without our hands shaking and
spilling our potential gifts. Solitude also gives us the chance to take the time
to replenish this chalice, to let our stores of energy rebuild so that we might
share them with others and with the world.

The protective measures we have developed to survive the
intense trials of this century have made us lose touch, both with ourselves and
with others. The more people extend themselves out into the world, the more of a
shield they need to protect their increasing vulnerability. This 'cocooning'
also results in a loss of self-knowledge – as the individual herself becomes
unsure of who she really is. This necessarily makes it difficult to relate to
others. As I explained in my project on individuality in the twentieth century:

Depression became a larger issue in the twentieth
century. More than anything else, this was a chance for people to withdraw
from the world and examine their own souls more deeply. People could not do
this in their everyday lives because they tended to live as a different
person with others. 'Social masks' and other defences turned dangerous and
made the chasm to the true self harder to traverse. For some people,
depression was the only way to crumble these barriers – by actually
descending into the chasm.

The solution of depression continues to work as a way of
drawing back and examining what lies inside the 'turtle's shell' of defences
most of us have built up. Once this is accomplished, we can once again emerge,
bringing with us the light of our true consciousness, and meet the world and the
people in it with honesty and vulnerability. As long as we can keep this
awareness of our own needs and true feelings, it will be much easier to respect
the same in others.

It is essential, too, not to forget to leave the fields of
relationship fallow once and a while – when you then return, you will give and
receive much more richly than if you constantly try to force growth and yield.

"And this more human love…will resemble that which we
are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists in this, that two
solitudes protect and border and salute each other."

– Rainer Maria Rilke

VII –True Love

"To respect a person is not possible without knowing
him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by
knowledge. Knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern."

–Erich Fromm

"The transformed speaks only to relinquishers. All
holders-on are stranglers."

–Rainer Maria Rilke

"The difference between involved and committed? It's
like bacon and eggs: the chicken's involved – the pig's committed."

Our entire society exists under the myths and stories of
perfect love: either the fairy-tale kind, ending in happily ever after, like
Cinderella, unrequited, like the Phantom of the Opera, or tragic love, too
powerful for lasting physical expression, such as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan
and Iseult. These ideals have been able to survive until recently because
couples until this century have

…managed to live together… without ever having a
conversation about what was going on between them. As long as family and
society prescribed the rules of marriage, individuals never had to develop any consciousness in this area.

Human 'chemistry', or mating cycles, seem to be arrayed
against anything but short, child-producing unions as well; our original
instincts let us stay in a monogamous relationship for four years – just long
enough to raise a child out of complete dependency. Also, infatuation in the
chemical viewpoint is true dependency – the hormones involved are
addictive. Therefore, if you are addicted to these hormones, it does not matter
who you are in a relationship with, as long as it stays exciting. Freud
described this type of addiction as the object of love gaining "…possession
of the entire self-love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus follows as a
natural consequence. The object has, so to speak, consumed the ego."

All addictions are formed to fill a void within an
individual's being. Love is a very tempting addiction because it can so
perfectly fill this gap left by undeveloped consciousness. In this way, it soon
takes the place of the addict's identity. The only way he can break out of this
is through extreme pain, either self-inflicted through a sudden burst of will,
or by the ending of an especially encompassing relationship. The ensuing
depression will either destroy him, or lead him to find himself.

The problem of the relationship itself becoming an addiction,
however, is only the most base; there are other, far more daunting, less
chemical difficulties as well. When we become involved in a relationship during
a time where our feelings and self are stable and balanced, we usually begin
with the good intention not to put any limitations on our feelings:

At the very heart of our experience of being human, each
of us has an intuitive sense of the value of unconditional love. We discover
the greatest joy in loving when we can suspend judgements and open fully to
the vivid reality of another's being. And we usually feel most loved when
others recognise and respond to us wholeheartedly. Unconditional love…
connects us with the vastness and profundity of what it is to be human. This
is the energy of the heart.

However, as soon as a relationship has actually to manifest
in the world, and as the relationship becomes more intimate, we encounter our
own fears, limitations and inhibitions. All of these limit the extent of our
ability to extend our love. If we are worried about being vulnerable because of
a past wound, a condition has already entered: I will love you if you do
not hurt me, if you do not betray my trust. This seems to be a waste, a
defiling of unconditional love. And yet, as we have already learned, both
polarities are necessary – the limits are necessary for love to work
practically, and the limitless love is needed to persist when the limits are
exceeded. The interplay between these two is what makes love human. The place of
unconditional love is to support the relationship. If it turns into
unconditional toleration, it becomes too permissive, and can even be
damaging to the loved one. Unconditional love cannot be used for judgement; it
is simply an acknowledgement of the goodness of the beloved's being. If
conditional love rules when to support a relationship, the relationship will
fall apart as soon as a condition is not met. Erich Fromm characterises these
two types of love as mother-love and father-love. He maintains that each person
models these types during his childhood and adolescence by

…building a motherly conscience on his own capacity for
love, and a fatherly conscience on his reason and judgement… if he would
only retain his fatherly conscience, he would become harsh and inhuman. If
he would only retain his motherly conscience, he would be apt to lose
judgement and to hinder himself and others in their development.

This idea makes apparent the need for a balance of strong
masculine and feminine influences in a child's life; in modern times, both can
come from either the mother or the father.

The edge between these difficulties is razor thin, and we
walk it with a blindfold; how is it possible to traverse it without slipping to
either side or cutting ourselves fatally? The answer is old, simple, and yet
often overlooked: trust in the goodness of the heart, your own and others'. Find
your solitude, and ask yourself what is truly the best thing to do. If your
answer is honestly considered, whatever you choose will be the right path, even
if it leads to turbulence:

…if your will is steadfastly to the good, and if you
are willing to suffer fully when the good is ambiguous… you will do
the right thing even though you will not have the consolation of knowing at the time that it is the right thing.

As long as you feel the centre steady within yourself, you
will be balanced in all your thoughts, feelings and actions, and above all, you
will love truly.

"Although my mind drifts from you

my heart feels your newness–

I walk straight without your hand

my heart knows you are still there

I smile because

I know

Where an angel wings between…"

VIII – Conclusion

As the twentieth century draws to a close, individuals are
beginning to find their true individuality. This, however, should not be the
ending point, but rather, a point of departure on a journey toward each other.

It does not take a great deal of effort to notice the themes
that surface throughout this discussion of love. Indeed, that is not surprising;
love is, essentially, the interaction between two polarities. The most obvious
names for these are male and female; in the archetypal relationship, the product
of the balance between these is a child. However, these polarities have other
manifestations within love relationships – in oriental philosophy, the
polarities would be Yin and Yang, and the third, reconciling force would emerge
as Chi. Some Christians would call the middle path Christ; a musician would call
it overtones. In any event, these polarities are not relative, though their
incarnations usually are; they are definite objective realities, through which
we discover our own subjective truth. In each human being exists both
polarities; consequently, we each have the capacity to balance these and find
the middle path. It is important to realise that these extremes

do
not simply live in us as outer influences, but they are actually a part of us.
Therefore, through relationships with other human beings, the effect of both the
dichotomies and their reconciliation is intensified, and has a much larger and
more profound effect.

Another theme that has emerged throughout the writing of this
project is the three social paths towards balance: the individual path, in which
the goal is enlightenment, the path of the couple, in which the goal is true
love, and the path of the fellowship, or 'family', in which the goal is true
community. Each of these paths experiences parallel stages, breakthroughs and
pitfalls in its development. Each has its shortcuts that promise an easy way
through, and each is necessary for human development.

The last symbol, permeating each section, is the phoenix: the
bird that dies in flame and rises from its own ashes. Throughout this century,
every old structure has had to die in order to be reborn. The fire in which the
creature perishes is consciousness; nothing can be consciously realised without
dying. Sometimes these structures survive in a recognisable form, sometimes they
are completely transformed.

Each human being in the twentieth century goes through the
same process. The pain of consciousness of the infinitely large and the
infinitely small eventually becomes too much for all of us – and we each
perish in searing flames, to rise up, filled with new understanding.

Love is what gives us the strength to endure that ordeal.

Afterward

08/05/98 6:26 AM

I cannot quite believe that this project is finished. The
whole process has made me a phoenix as well. During the course of writing the
project, I experienced every aspect I have written about at least once. I
suppose I should have known that I was asking for it when I chose to do a
project on love, but I didn't realise that my practical would be as practical as
it was. The experiences were amazing – but they also made it very difficult to
write; it is not easy to write an objective theory of sexuality a few hours
after one's first kiss. Anyhow, with the help of copious amounts of black tea, I
finished it within a reasonable vicinity of the deadline – and I think it is
the better for having been written after my experiences had been reconciled and
I had returned to balance.

I don't know how much I really learned about love in writing
this project. It seemed more like I was clarifying my thoughts on my own
situations. There is not one friendship, family or passion of mine that has
escaped transformation through this labour of…love? Also, my relationship to
myself has changed. I have tempered my fear of affecting the world –
experience has taught me, the hard way, that being paralysed can be just as
great an evil. As well, I have come to the realisation that impatience is the
greatest wrong when it comes to love. If something is forced to move before its
time, it only shatters, crumbles, and you are left holding dust.